This Convention’s All Over the Map

Dear Convention Visitors:

You deserve congratulations--if for no other reason than because you found your way here. After all, AOL announced at the start of the week that the event would be held 2,700 miles east of here, as Thomas Allison of Santa Monica pointed out (see accompanying).

(Ah . . . L.A. . . . Philadelphia . . . they’re just names on a computer screen to those office-bound AOL nerds.)

Kudos, as well, to Time magazine’s correspondents for making it to L.A., especially after the publication had said the convention would be 100-plus miles south of here (see accompanying).

WHAT A BUNCH OF ACTORS! Tom Selleck (sans Detroit Tiger baseball cap) plays a presidential candidate this week in a TNT movie, “Running Mates.” He’s apparently more orthodox (and boring) than Hollywood’s past occupants of the White House, including these characters:

LEAST HYGIENIC: Twentyish rock star Max Frost (Christopher Jones) is elected after the voting age is lowered to 14 because someone has dropped LSD in the capital’s water supply (“Wild in the Streets,” 1968.)

BEST MEDIATOR: President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) referees a wrestling match between the Soviet ambassador and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during a nuclear crisis in “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964).

WORST MEDIATOR: Simple-minded President James Dale (Jack Nicholson), invoking a famous L.A. line, asks Martian invaders, “Can’t we all get along?” They incinerate him and most of Washington, D.C. (“Mars Attacks,” 1996).

BIGGEST CRITIC OF L.A.: “I really want you to leave Los Angeles,” President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) tells his wife via telephone in “Independence Day” (1996). Of course, L.A. is being attacked by flying saucers at the time.

And, finally:

BIGGEST PAIN IN THE NECK: In “Werewolf of Washington” (1973), the president (Biff McGuire) is bitten by a vampire--his own aide!

DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO . . . ? Not sure how many of these classics are available at Beverly Hills Video Club, so you ought to phone ahead before visiting. Chester Jaeger of Claremont adds this reminder: Beverly Hills Video is in San Jose, Costa Rica (see photo).

NOT SO WILD IN THE STREETS (2000): One of my favorite convention protester quotes this week was uttered by a woman in a white T-shirt who joined a march of black-garbed anarchists at Pershing Square. The Times’ Jessica Garrison overheard the contrary anarchist tell the others: “I’m sorry. I don’t wear black if it’s hot.”

SPEAKING OF THE HEAT: The heavy demands for electricity this summer have caused concerns that the utilities might have to institute rolling blackouts in California. But, the energy situation could be dimmer.

“In the 1880s, electrical utility users faced power cutoffs far more threatening than today’s,” points out Ralph Shaffer, history professor emeritus at Cal Poly Pomona.

“Editor Horace Bell of the Porcupine newspaper, the L.A. Weekly of that decade, claimed the utility company turned off the power when the moon was out. Even the company’s supporters admitted that the generator shut down at 9 p.m. on weeknights and 10:30 p.m. on Saturdays.”

miscelLAny:

Kevin Stock of Rossmoor saw this bulletin in the Los Alamitos News-Enterprise:

“August 13, Los Alamitos Blvd., Block 11000, 2:41 p.m.: The ATM would not stop dispensing money.”

Sounds like a political action committee

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.